My city has a small Jewish population, which means
it's highly unlikely I'll find a Jewish roommate who also keeps
kosher. I think I've figured out how to make the kosher kitchen
work (though I'm always open to suggestions from people who have
been in my place before), but what do I do about Passover? Is
it enough to ask one's roommate to keep her chametz on her side
of the kitchen, contained in a receptacle?

Dear Zippy Abramson,

If you must room with a non-observant roommate,
the ideal would be to talk to her about the possibility of keeping
kosher while in the apartment. You'd be surprised to find how
many Jews are actually willing to keep kosher if merely presented
with the idea. At the very least the apartment should be kept
kosher for the eight days of Passover. It shouldn't be too hard
to find a Jewish roommate willing to make this compromise; because
most Jews anyway observe Passover in some form or another. (And
besides, I wonder: Would you want to room with someone not willing
to compromise for one week?)

However, Jewish law does not recommend sharing a
kosher kitchen with someone who does not keep kosher. For one,
there's the question of the person's knowledge of the kashrut
laws. Second, when push comes to shove, how reliable can we assume
a person to be if they themselves don't fully subscribe to the
idea of keeping kosher? If she's cooked all day for the dinner-party
you two are planning for a bunch of friends, and 10 minutes before
the guests arrive, she realizes she's cooked all the meat in dairy
pans, will she tell you? Or will she think, "Is it really
such a big deal if just this once the meat was cooked in dairy
pans? I mean, the pans were totally clean, and what Zippy doesn't
know won't hurt her."

Such kashrut mistakes are quite common, so you need
a kitchen partner whom you know you can rely on 100 per cent of
the time to inform you if something's gone wrong.

For further reading, see the book "After
the Return" by Rabbi Mordechai Becher and Rabbi Moshe
Newman, Feldheim Publishers.